Venice surfer’s ‘theFINproject’ hopes to raise $80,000 on Kickstarter

When award-winning commercial photographer and surfer Timothy Hogan was exploring the idea of making a documentary film about his favorite water sport, he started by delving into its major changes.

And that’s when he made a curious discovery.

“It didn’t have anything necessarily to do with the boards,” he says. “The common factor was the fin and what people were doing with it.”

This often overlooked yet vital aspect of surfing is the subject of “theFINproject,” a visual exploration of the art and story of the surfboard fin that the 36-year-old Venice surfer is hoping to fund through a Kickstarter campaign through Nov. 3. As of Wednesday, the project had raised $10,340 of its $80,000 goal.

The project includes a series of fine art photographs available for purchase at www.theFINproject.net. But that’s only the beginning. A gallery show, photography book and online archive are also planned as part of the project, whose centerpiece is the documentary.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the ‘inventor’s mind,’” he says, explaining there’s at least a handful in the history of the fin.

The documentary focuses on these inventors, going back to Tom Blake who was credited with putting the first fin on a board in 1935. The first fin was a long, low-profile metal keel.

“In the early days, the boards were huge and the fins were mostly repurposed,” Hogan says.

The film revisits the Windansea La Jolla scene of the 1950s when Bob Simmons put a pair of fins at the edge of the board as opposed to the middle. It introduces George Greenough, who Hogan calls “the father of modern performance surfing.”

“In the 1960s, he was doing moves on knee boards using flexible fins inspired by dolphins that were the inspiration for championship surfers like Matt Young on the standup board,” he says.

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By 1970, the Campbell brothers, Duncan and Malcolm, came up with a tri-fin surfboard they dubbed the Bonzer. Former world champion surfer Mark Richards followed in the late ’70s, popularizing the twin fin, which made for a faster and more maneuverable board. And in 1980, surfer and shaper Simon Anderson was credited with the design of the three-fin “thruster,” which is still popular today.

But the fin has continued to evolve.

“It really is the most important driving force in surfing,” he says.

Hogan adds the fin is not just an engineering feat, it’s a work of art whose aesthetics have been played up and down through the decades.

“Now we’re getting back to a time where people are making them look really high tech or playing up the beauty of the handcrafted design,” he says. “They really are works of art.”